My melancholy little Circus of Doom.

This was years ago, mind you, when he was still living in Philadelphia.

He’d been drinking for most of the day, by this point; which wasn’t a regular habit at the time, though friends reported he had been a little stressed of late. He wasn’t a violent man, as a rule. But even the gentlest souls have a breaking point. And so it was that one day, mere hours before being due to start broadcast on another episode of American Bandstand, Clark was found several miles outside of town at a pig farm beating a large sow with Charlie O’Donnell’s mailbox.

Why he had been at Charlie’s house earlier that day, doing what he did, is a mystery that never did get resolved. He and Charlie were pretty good friends, after all, so for him to show up at Charlie’s house with a rucksack full of enamel paints & proceed to adorn Charlie’s front fence with obscene imagery and then let the air out of all the tyres of his car before attacking & then making off with his mailbox is really quite inexplicable behaviour, but really that’s another story entirely.

Now, lucky for the sow, Charlie O’Donnell’s mailbox was not really well-designed as far as improvised clubs go, so Dick wasn’t really managing to inflict that much damage. Nevertheless, it took 3 farmhands to take him down that day and another fifth of bourbon on top of what he’d already had to quieten him down once more. He missed his broadcast that day, but after writing letters of apology to all concerned and making financial reparations where appropriate, the matter was allowed to fall and was never spoken of again.

The pilot episode is set in a Prison, in which Policey McDoctorface is serving out a sentence. He’s made mistakes in his past, but he’s essentially good at heart and just wants to do what’s right by the people around him. The episode focuses on his attempts to play matchmaker for his fellow inmates, whilst putting together a solid case for his upcoming parole hearing. He finds a solution for a sticky love triangle between the Warden, a Guard and the leader of the Neo-Nazi inmate gang that satisfies all involved, and the episode ends with his parole hearing having a successful conclusion. His upbeat attitude to all the problems faced over the course of the episode endear the audience to him, ensuring a solid fanbase for the series.

The series itself then deals with Policey McDoctorface’s attempts to adhere to his parole responsibilities whilst faced with the temptations constantly assailing him from the former acquaintances who led him astray in his past. All the while, he is trying to resume his working life of criminal investigation at both Federal and Local Precinct level whilst practising Medicine and courtroom legal proceedings, and trying to straighten out his tangled, sometimes harrowing, lovelife.

A guaranteed smash hit that will appeal to a broad audience, with solid potential for at least seven to eight 26-episode seasons.

Shortly after his death in 2000, family members arranging Charles Shulz’s estate and personal effects discovered a collection of rough animatics for a number of Peanuts animated specials that never made it into production. The story arcs were quite different from what had come before, and may well explain aspects of lead character Charlie Brown’s personality development over the life of the series. The following is a selection of the titles found.